Winds of Fate
by The Pepper Pot
Summary: Things have been really tense in the Baxter building for a long time, and when things break, the members of the Fantastic Four take comfort in different ways. This was written for the comic series, but it doesn't include any characters which don't show up in the movie. Think of it was 1960's AU.
1. Chapter 1

This is the first multiple chapter story I've written in a very long time. I'd love to hear about what you have to say so please leave me a comment and if you'd like to contact me through personal message that would be even better. Every bit of criticism will help me (as long as its not cruel). Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy!

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Sue was crying again. It was happening more and more frequently. This was almost as bad as the first few weeks when her mother died. She had been angry then, and sad. But now she wasn't angry like she was then. It was as if she had just collapsed in on herself and began to disappear.

Nobody else was taking it any better. Reed hadn't been seen for days. Sometimes Johnny wondered if he was even still in the building. Although it was usual for Reed to spend a lot of time in the lab, he would eat every few days, and even if he wasn't caught in person, the CCTV would catch him leaving or coming, but even though Johnny checked, there was nothing to signify that he had. Ben seemed to know more than he was willing to disclose, and had been spending a lot of time with Alicia.

Weeks passed, and voices rose. At first they were over trivial matters, like why Reed had missed a date in favour of a lecture. It got worse. Sometimes Johnny wondered if the five floors they rented were enough to buffer their voices from the rest of the tenants' prying ears. They had lived a public life for ten years, but some things needed to be kept just them. Everyone had the right to keep this sort of thing private, even for a little while.

One night, Johnny heard the door of the room next to his open and close. A light flicked on and there was the rummaging of drawers. The lamp clicked again and there was silence broken by the occasional sniffle. The next morning he went to the kitchen and saw his sister sitting at the table with red eyes. Whether it was from lack of sleep of from crying, he couldn't tell. She sat there with her cup of English breakfast tea, not speaking, not looking at him, scarcely breathing.

Mornings were like that now. Every day, there was a little less of Sue. Johnny would sit there across the breakfast table from her and not see her. Her eyes would stare into the wall or out the window or into her mug and she'd sigh and she'd cough and she'd get up to get dressed and she'd go on with her day. She only cried at night when she thought nobody was there to hear her.

Johnny didn't know if Ben knew she had moved out of Reed's room. He didn't know if they knew he knew. But the life in the penthouse suite of the Baxter building was disappearing.

One morning, Sue didn't come out of her room. Johnny thought about knocking all morning. She didn't know he knew she was there. Around lunch time, Johnny decided that he should check on her. "Sue? Are you in there? I've got to talk to you about something." He knocked and she didn't answer. "I'm coming in." He pushed the door open and found that the room was as bare as it had been back when they had lived in Glenville. Some of her things were here; clothing, toiletries, but not as much as he knew she owned.

Johnny went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone. The phone at the Glenville house was still disconnected, just as they had left it when they had moved into the Baxter building. He left a note on the pad saying where he went, not that anybody would be around to read it. As he prepared to leave, Reed came into the room. "Johnny, I was just looking for your sister. You haven't seen her, have you?" Another figure accompanied him into the room, a tall red head whose name Johnny couldn't quite place at the moment, although he knew him to be a lawyer.

That was the moment it clicked for him. It was all real. It was really happening. "I think she went back to Glenville." He regretted it the moment he said it. He had no proof. She could be anywhere.

Reed cursed under his breath. "Who's she kidding? She has been asking for this for months and now she's trying to back out by making herself scarce." He turned and headed for the elevator. Johnny guessed he was headed to the hanger. "I'll be back with her as soon as I can."

Johnny watched him go, wanting it all to be a dream. The red headed lawyer was still in the doorway to the kitchen. "Hi. Can I offer you some coffee?"

The man walked into the room, tapping with his cane. "Yes, thank you." He sat down at the kitchen table and took out some files.

It took Johnny a few minutes, but when he returned with two mugs in his hand, he saw what the papers said. Everything had been done behind closed doors and in whispers. They had never said they were going to do it, but everyone had assumed that they would as tempers stretched very thin and stamina faded away into nothing. "So it's really happening then."

Murdock (the name of the firm had been written on the papers, and Johnny remembered that he must have been Murdock) 'looked' up. "Surely they've spoken to you about it."

Johnny shrugged. "I knew it was coming. They knew I knew it was coming. There's not much left to tell me; the atmosphere said it all. That's the same thing, right?" He knew it wasn't. He knew that if they respected him they would have told him straight up. They were both part of his family and god damn it mattered to him as much as it did to anyone.

Murdock took a sip of his coffee and ran his fingers over the documentation. "People are usually high strung when it comes to a divorce."


	2. Chapter 2

Things were difficult at first to say the least. Sue, who had indeed gone back to Glenville, was brought back to the Baxter building to sign the papers and then she was gone again. Johnny had gone to visit her, but she wouldn't step onto Manhattan Island let alone go to the Baxter building to visit him. She was keeping herself busy by repainting the old house in different bright colours. Three days after, he came by and noticed she had a very elaborate stencil, a rose the size of a hedge, pinned to the wall and was painting over it.

He watched her work for a few minutes before making his presence known. "I never knew you were so artistic."

Sue whipped around, caught off guard. No matter how many times she had saved the world, her little brother could always surprise her. She glanced over at the dining room wall. Yesterday she had painted it yellow. Today, an orange rose was going up over it on one end. "I suppose." She shook her head. "I just need to keep busy for a little while." She dipped her brush and lifted it to the wall.

"You know me, just checking in to see that my favourite sister is still okay. We miss you." She gave him a look which said 'don't even try'. "Ben and I, I mean. It's not the same without you there."

She laughed weakly. "Yeah, because none of you bother to clean." Johnny winced at that. It was true, but seemed a little too cruel.

He toed at the tarp-covered rug. "We wondered if you were still in the team." He realized how mean that sounded as he said it. She'd only divorced three days ago and he was asking her to ignore it and work with her ex husband as her boss in a group which by nature required absolute intimacy to function.

"Yeah, I'll be back.". She winked at him. "You didn't really think you'd be rid of me that easily, did you?". She seemed chipper. Anyone else would have been fooled by the act, but Johnny had knoetcher his entire life and knew she was hurting. There was something else too.

Johnny watched her work. Yesterday he had offered to help, but he was hopeless; specks of paint flew everywhere and messed up the floor and ceiling. Sue had insisted he stop after that. "Well, I'm going to get a snack; you want anything?" He heard a clatter as the paintbrush fell from his sister's hand. He turned back around to see her staring at the wall vacantly. A long streak of orange ran down her rose. "Sue?" She started breathing heavily. He ran over to help her. "Sue, you've been eating, haven't you?" She didn't respond. "Sue, get dressed, I'm taking you out to eat." She nodded and went to the back room to change.

Johnny sighed and picked up her brush and paint. He poured the orange back into the can and hammered the top shut, and brought the brush to the kitchen where he washed the bristles clean. Sue came back from her mother's bedroom, now her bedroom. She wasn't any thinner than he remembered her, but she had a frail look to her now, one which screamed tired.

"I know you don't want to set footpin Manhattan right now, even if all the best restaurants are there, but let's eat around here.". They set out in Johnny's Mustang. "How about that restaurant we liked when we were little. That Chinese place?"

For a moment Sue looked lost in the past, and Johnny wondered if he hadn't said something wrong. She forced a smile. "Lets go." The drove along in silence through the familiar streets of their childhood. "I've been thinking I should get a job."

Johnny started. Sue had never worked a real job a day in her life. Granted, she did work very hard with the Fantastic Four and was very responsible, but it didn't sound right to hear her say she wanted a traditional job. "Like what?" was all he could think to say.

She rolled her head back, trying to get more comfortable. "Like...a secretary?"

"You'd hate it, Sis." He didn't know what made him say it, but it was the truth. His sister was strong willed and had everything to offer. The job was demeaning and so far beneath her. She had proven again and again that she was meant for great things.

She looked startled. "What? What makes you say that? I'm sure I could do it."

Johnny shook his head. "That's not what I'm saying. Think for a minute. You'd be sitting in one spot for eight hours at a time. You'd have to take orders and perform boring routine tasks. There'd be no thrill and no excitement. You have everything to offer the world. That's not you."

"But"

"Sue, you'll have a hard time getting a traditional job. Everyone knows who you are and don't think they won't find out about the divorce. You won't be able to get the job you want and anything less than that is a waste of your time. Also, you never went to college, and for a girl, that shuts doors. And you've never worked before, so it's not like you have work experience to make up for it." The words sounded cruel rolling off his tongue. "Why not just take some time and come back when you feel like it."

They were getting close to the restaurant. "I already told you, I'll be back. It's just that I don't know how long it'll be before I can bring myself to live in a flat he's paying for. So I have to maintain myself in other ways. Don't you see?"

Johnny stepped out of the car and handed the keys to the valet. "Lets drop this for now, but this conversation is not over."

Sue nodded and walked into the restaurant ahead of him, and Johnny, despite himself, looked up for an instant.

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I reall want this chapter to come off as period, but I'm not sureabout it, can I have feedback on that?


	3. Chapter 3

Johnny got back to the Baxter building late. He had considered staying the night with Sue to make sure she was safe, but decided against it. She was more than capable of taking care of herself against normal people, and nobody knew she was living there. He walked into the kitchen and grabbed a drink. He thought the whole flat would be quiet. He thought everyone else would have been asleep. He didn't expect to hear a choke from behind him.

He spun around and burst into flame only to find his brother in law alone in the shadow of the kitchen light. The light slowly faded and he went to turn on the lamp in the parlor, illuminating the whole room. Reed was sitting next to a brandy decanter, but fortunately didn't look too drunk. He walked over to the older man. The man who ruined his sister's life. The man who gave him his powers. The man who sat there divorced and crying in his quiet apartment while what was left of his family deserted him. He sat down across from him. "Hey." Johnny took another sip of his drink, which had softened considerably from his outburst. He stood to throw out the ruined drink and get a new one.

He sat down again. Reed looked up at him. His eyes were watery and a little bloodshot. It looked like he hadn't slept in days, and for all Johnny knew, that might be the case. They hadn't been on the best of terms recently. "You look terrible."

"I feel terrible." He knocked back another drink. His hands weren't shaking much, although Johnny made a note to count the drinks from here. "Do you have any idea what it's like?" He looked the younger man over and shook his head, trying to clear it. Maybe three drinks, then. His eyes glanced over Johnny. "No. You wouldn't. You and Crystal parted by fate and under good terms." He reached for the bottle again but thought better of it and with a glance at Johnny stood, getting water in stead. He returned. "It was constant, you know. And mutual. We both want to blame the other but it's not like either of us are guilt free." He drank some and shook his head again. "Neither of us wanted it to come to this. We just. It just." It looked like the scientist was going to break down any moment, but he regained his composure. "This shouldn't have happened, but there seemed to be no other way." His eyes met Johnny's for a moment before glancing away, still watery and sad looking.

There was a long pause. It seemed that if Reed didn't trust himself to say anything and Johnny wanted to think. Finally he said, "I don't blame you. Maybe I want to, I don't know, but I don't. I can't blame sis, but it's not you. I don't know what happened, not really." He finished his drink and stood. The bottle was thrown out and he returned with another.

Reed's forehead was damp and his hair stuck to it in clumps. Johnny was tempted to press it back into the perfectly combed arrangement he usually wore. Neither said anything for the longest time. He listened to the street noises for below them. Sirens, traffic, a radio from a few floors down, the occasional bang. It was late, but New York never slept. Reed's hands were fidgeting on the table. Not much, but hew was obviously thinking hard about something. Probably the divorce. If it had hit him as hard as it had hit Sue- he didn't want to think about it.

"I visited Sue today." He didn't know what made him bring her up. He knew they both still cared for each other, and that Reed would care about her well being, even if they weren't married. Reed looked at him expectantly, so he continued. "She's patching herself up. She'll need some time, but she'll come back eventually."

Reed nodded. "Good. We don't have a team without her. Not really. She's so...useful." Johnny knew that wasn't the adjective he wanted to use. There were things he still felt for his sister and some scars which would never entirely fade. "I just...damn."

Johnny watched the older man. He wanted to know what happened. He wanted to see what his brain was doing. He wanted to understand what he knew Reed assumed he was too young and inexperienced to understand. But he didn't ask. Johnny kept secret his questions and listened to the night.

He finished his drink and left, this time with the intention of going to bed. It had been an excruciating day. "Night."

Johnny was almost out the door when he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Will you stay a while?" came the voice from the other room.

He considered making his excuses, but decided against it. The old man had it rougher than he did, after all. He didn't know when the last time the scientist had seen another person was. "Yeah, sure, brother-in-law." He considered this for a second and decided to keep the nickname. They were still brothers even if his sister wasn't married to him any more. It didn't do anything to their relationship. He sat down again. "Did you want to talk?"

Reed sighed. "Not really. I just...we haven't seen each other in a few days. I thought. I don't know."

He wanted to laugh. Anything objective and Reed would always know the answer. Ask the man about his emotions and he'd usually flounder for a minute before giving up. "That's okay, we don't have to." The grandfather clock chimed one o' clock. It really was getting late. They sat in silence for a long time. Reed reached for his and traced the veins for a few minutes, looking over his hands. It felt weird. He was so used to his hands being used as tools he had on some level forgotten that sensation could go the other way and that he could lose control of what touched his hands.

He watched Reed's face as he did this. Watched the way he looked so carefully, as if he were mentally mapping the hand and trying to remember everything about it. If he hadn't been so tired he might have thought it was strange, but as it was, he just watched Reed do it. Reed looked up after several minutes and looked Johnny in the eye. There was something in his eye something he couldn't name, but he was sure he'd seen the look before.

As he looked at Reed, he tried to figure out what the look was. It was driving him crazy. "Reed?" he asked, trying to get the man's attention. He wanted to ask something. Something was important. He just couldn't put his finger on it.

And then he felt a prickling at the back of his neck. He hand't been paying attention. Reed leaned over the table and pulled him into a kiss. If he hadn't been so tired, he might have burst into flame. If he hadn't been at the end of his proverbial rope he might have jumped back and slapped the man and left in the night. But he was both of those things. And the kiss felt good. And he sat there and kissed the man softly and chastely.

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I wasn't at all sure how this was going to work out, but I think it went pretty well. I hope you like it! Please review!


	4. Chapter 4

Johnny Storm slept well that night, deeply and calmly for the first time in what seemed like months. There were no dreams and when he woke up he almost felt like the world could be right again. Like the divorce hadn't wrecked the team, like Ben had moved back in (he hadn't seen the big guy in weeks...was he still at Alicia's?) and like Sue wasn't on Long Island trying to get a job as something stupid and menial. Almost like he hadn't accidentally kissed his brother in law. And liked it.

He shook his head and got up from his captain's bed, treading heavily across the floor to his bathroom he had shared with his sister when they had first moved in and again for a fortnight a week ago. All her things were gone as quickly as she was. He showered, steamed himself dry, and wiped off the foggy mirror to look into his reflection.

He was the same as any other day, but physical appearances aren't everything. Inside he was screaming. Screaming that nothing would ever be the same again. Screaming that he didn't want things to be the same. Hating that he should want things to go back to normal but didn't.

If things went back to the way things were, he would never again feel a kiss like that again. It wasn't like kissing girls; with girls it was always a sweet or lusty. With Reed, there was some sort of communication going on that he couldn't name, exactly. Maybe it was just because they had shared so much of their lives together. Maybe that was enough. Their kiss had shared all of that and had dragged on for minutes without becoming anything more, and it was far from sweet; it carried everything they had been dwelling on for weeks.

Johnny shook his head; he couldn't think these things. Reed was another man whom he had kissed because last night he was very tired. He couldn't remember very well what had happened because he was so very tired from the day before. And goodness, it was a long day. He staggered a bit when he realized that everything had been so recent; his sister moving out, the rose, the job hunting, the starving, the kiss. It all seemed to be something that could be spread over a week or even a month. Why did things have to be manic right now? Why couldn't he just slow down and relax.

Suddenly all the energy he had just manifested to seize the day was gone. He realized how tired he was and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and stay there for a very long time. He knew this as a sign of depression and dint' allow himself to take these steps. In stead, he continued out the door to the kitchen where he stopped and made coffee.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he wanted to look for Reed, but the idea was fleeting. Then it returned. Why shouldn't he want to look for Reed? He was family, he was the team leader, he was a close friend. There was nothing wrong with wanting to see him again. It wasn't like he wanted a repeat of last night to happen. He just wanted company. And real company is always hard to find for a super hero.

He was in the lab. Johnny had made an extra mug of coffee and had brought it along. He started to nudge the door open with his foot, but Reed got to it before he had to shuffle for long. He took one mug off the teenager's hands, and an appreciate "thank you" came from the back of the lab.

Johnny came in and made himself comfortable across from the area the scientist was currently working so that he wouldn't get in the way. Not that that always worked; the projects, much like the scientist himself, could span the entire room. "It doesn't look like you slept last night." He eyed the...thingy...Reed was working on. He knew quite a bit about engines and mechanics, but this, like many things Reed did, was just beyond him.

A groan answered him, as Reed sat up with a great deal of effort. "No, I couldn't sleep, so I came down here and worked on this."

Johnny eyed it curiously. "What exactly is it?"

The old twinkle came back to the scientist. He always had enough energy to talk about some wacky invention, even if they were in death's way or weren't listening to him. It hardly mattered sometimes. But when someone actually asked was like Christmas coming early. "Well, since you ask, it's an electro-magnetic-bio-cosmic-scan. Basically it will allow us to find any other people who may have been affected by cosmic rays in the same way we have and allow us to make contact with them." Johnny was on the verge of asking why he was so suddenly interested in other life forms which may have super powers like theirs. "No coincidence." That shut him up.

It was another five minutes of slowly drinking coffee and watching the scientist work before Johnny decided he wouldn't bring up the last night. They didn't need to talk about it. The scientist was amazing to watch and despite himself he was more or less hypnotized by the way the older man's body moved within the machine, sometimes stretching or squeezing to fit where a normal human could not in order to get a better angle to work from.

He didn't have to bring it up; Reed did. "Last night." That was all he said, but Johnny felt his heart race, hanging on to Reed's words, dying to hear what the next thing he said would be. After a minute it became clear the Reed had been testing the waters for a response. He forced himself to relax, but did not give any other reaction. "Last night...I don't know what you were thinking. I know what I thought you were thinking, but I wondered."

So he was going to fish like that. Johnny shifted and cleared his throat, and forced his eyes away from Reed's arm, which was currently being pinched to the side of a glass container and to his coffee. "You're not angry it happened."

Reed seemed to let out a sigh of relief. "Neither are you." It was almost a question the way he said it. He grew flushed and quickly added, "but it's wrong, however. We'll pretend it didn't happen. Besides, I've heard of it, but I'm not the type to partake. You know that."

Johnny smiled at how quickly the scientist got flustered. "Neither am I. I'm still waiting for Crystal." The older man nodded. And they let it go at that for weeks.

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I've been working on this forever! I wasn't sure what to do next; time periods are so hard to write! R&R!


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